The Spectrum by Dr. Dean Ornish:

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Dr. Dean Ornish is the renowned author and research pioneer who demonstrated that heart disease could be reversed by a healthy lifestyle and a a low-fat, low-sodium, vegetarian diet. Ornish defines his latest book The Spectrum as, "a scientific program proven to feel better, live longer, lose weight, and gain health", and his goal is to encourage you to make healthy lifestyle changes rooted in the joy of living and feeling good, rather than the fear of illness and death.

Ornish advocates a gradual series of changes in lifestyle habits, because it's so much more tolerable, and so much more likely that the new-found habits will stick. The Spectrum is a comprehensive lifestyle plan, which in addition to better nutrition also calls for regular exercise, stress reduction and meditation for a whole, healthier you.

"The Spectrum" is basically the range of options - from healthiest to unhealthiest - in a given area. There is a nutrition spectrum, a stress spectrum, an exercise spectrum - and to begin you need to figure out where you fit in each spectrum. Are you a terribly unhealthy eater? Is stress killing you? Do you exercise moderately? Pinpoint your location on the spectrum then, depending upon your goals, you make changes in your life that will move you along the spectrum towards where you want to be. It's totally customized to you.

To better illustrate: The nutrition spectrum consists of five groups. Group 1 is the healthiest end of the spectrum and Group 5 is the unhealthiest end of it. To pinpoint your location, identify the group that contains the foods you tend to eat most of the time. The closer you are to Group 1, the more health benefits you will gain and keep. If you're already at or near Group 1, you may want or need to make only small changes in your diet. If you're near or solidly in Group 5, bigger changes are necessary to move you up the spectrum towards better health. Here Ornish does detour into a discussion of so-called "nutrigenomics", which is the study of genetic patterns and their interaction with foods. He insists that healthy food is one of the most important things you can do to fight genetic predisposition to illness. The book features over 100 recipes to follow and modify as you move along the spectrum.

The stress management spectrum is a similar construct. If you're a person who is unable to effectively manage your stress levels, it's likely that stress hormones are wreaking havoc on your system, and undermining your health. While some people are fortunate to have an innate ability to effectively turn their stresses off from time to time, and they are doubly lucky in that that ability is saving their systems from the ravages of stress hormones. You pinpoint your location on the stress spectrum by determining how greatly stress impacts you. Stress management and reduction techniques are provided, and a DVD on guided meditations by Anne Ornish (Ornish's wife) is included with the book.

The exercise spectrum follows the same model: a regular, dedicated exerciser is at the healthy end of the spectrum, a sedentary couch potato is at the unhealthiest end. Guidance and exercise plans are provided to get and keep you moving towards the healthy end of the spectrum.

The Spectrum is to be lauded for its comprehensive approach to good health. Whether the plan works for you is - like all successful weight loss plans - totally up to you.